by C. S. Lewis
55 Memoirs of Count Grammont, ed. Gordon Goodwin (1903).
56 The Times Literary Supplement (27 March 1919), p. 167: ‘These lyrics are always graceful and polished, and their themes are chosen from those which naturally attract poets—The Autumn Morning, Oxford, Lullaby, The Witch, Milton Read Again, and so on. The Thought, when closed with, is found often not to rise above the commonplace .�.�.’
57 ‘I have seen the so great Vergil!’
58 This was Sir William Quartus Ewart (b. 1844) who died on 17 October. His wife, Lady Ewart, was first cousin to Jack’s mother. Their home, ‘Glenmachan’, was very near “Little Lea” and there is a pleasing picture of the Ewarts and their children in the chapter of Surprised by Joy entitled ‘Mountbracken and Campbell’—‘Mountbracken’ being a ficticious name for Glenmachan.
59 By George Borrow (1851).
60 Jack was hiding a good deal from his father. He was in Somerset, not with a male friend, but with Mrs Moore and Maureen. Since Mrs Moore and Maureen had moved to Oxford in January 1919 they had lived in four different places. They had gone for a month’s holiday with Jack in Somerset because of a disagreement with the landlady, Mrs John Jeffrey, from whom they had been renting a flat over what was then, and still is, a butcher’s shop in 58 Windmill Road. Having spent a year in college, Jack was allowed to live in rooms approved by the University. Upon their return to Oxford at the beginning of May, Jack went to live with the Moores in ‘Court Field Cottage’ in 131 Osler Road, Headington.
61 By Sir Walter Scott (1814).
62 ‘Oldie’ was the nickname of Robert Capron (1851–1911), a native of Devon and the Headmaster of Wynyard School. Wynyard is the dreadful school referred to in Surprised by Joy as ‘Belsen’.
63 His tutor in History was George Hope Stevenson (1880–1952) who, after taking a B.A. in 1904 as a member of Balliol, was Fellow and Praelector in Ancient History at University College 1906–49. Jack’s tutor in Philosophy was Edgar Frederick Carritt (1876–1964). Following his undergraduate years at Hertford College he was elected Fellow and Praelector in Philosophy at Univ. in 1898.
64 This volume of poems was to be published by Basil Blackwell. It turned out, however, that the poets themselves would have to raise the money for having it printed. As this was impossible the project had to be abandoned.
65 The relatives were Jack’s maternal uncle, Augustus Warren Hamilton (1866–1945), and his much-loved Canadian wife, Anne Sargent Harley Hamilton (1866–1930).
66 Warren, unable to afford a car, bought a motorcycle with a sidecar instead. He and Jack went to Belfast on it, arriving there on 26 August. They were with their father until 23 September.
67 Jack had been elected President of the Martlets on 15 October 1919 and he was prevailed upon to retain the position until 13 June 1921. The paper which he read in Cambridge on ‘Narrative Poetry’ was read to the Oxford Martlets on 3 November 1920. The paper has not survived, but the minutes written about it are reproduced in my essay ‘To the Martlets’, op. cit., pp. 44–45.
68 On 15 December Warren was granted a leave of absence until his departure from Sierra Leone. He and Jack arrived in Belfast together on 24 December. Jack returned to Oxford on 13 January. Warren, however, remained with his father until 8 March. He sailed for Sierra Leone the next day.
69 Paul Victor Mendelssohn Beneke (1868–1944) was the great-grandson of the composer Felix Mendelssohn. He became a Fellow of Magdalen College in 1893 and taught Classics until his retirement in 1925. He lived in Magdalen (with his vast collection of pigs) for the rest of his life. Lewis’s reminiscences of Beneke can be found in Margaret Denecke’s Paul Victor Mendelssohn Beneke (1868–1944) (Oxford [1954]), pp. 31–34.
70 The Rev. Alexander James Carlyle (1861–1943) was the Chaplain of University College. He was an undergraduate at Exeter College, and following his appointment as Chaplain of Univ. in 1893 he became an active member of the Martlets.
71 The Lewis brothers were enthusiastic nicknamers. Since boyhood they had been amused by their father’s ‘low’ Irish pronunciation of ‘potatoes’ as ‘p’daytas’. As a result, he became ‘The P’dayta’ or ‘The P’daytabird’—and now, with Warren in Sierre Leone, ‘Monsieur L’Oiseau Pomme de Terre’. The brothers had nicknames for one another as well. When I observed Jack addressing his brother in letters as ‘APB’ and being addressed by Warren as ‘SPB’ I asked what the initials meant. He told me that when they were very young their nurse, Lizzie Endicott, when drying them after a bath, threatened to smack their ‘piggiebottoms’. In time the brothers decided that Warren was the ‘Archpiggiebotham’ and Jack the ‘Smallpiggiebotham’.
72 Alfred Kenneth Hamilton Jenkin (1900–80) matriculated at Univ. in 1919 and after completing his B.A. he took a B.Litt. degree. The Cornish Mines (1927) was the first of his many interesting books on Cornwall.
73 Although the passages are slightly misquoted they come from Richard Carew’s The Survey of Cornwall (1602), p. 22.
74 Sir Rodney Marshall Sabine Pasley (1899–1982), who succeeded to a Baronetcy in 1947, took his B.A. from University College in 1921. His first position was as a Master at Alleyn’s School, 1921–25; then Vice-Principal of Rajkumar College at Rajkot, India, 1926–28. He was the Headmaster of Barnstaple Grammar School 1936–43 and the Headmaster of Central Grammar School, Birmingham from 1943 until his retirement in 1959. When Jack wrote this letter Pasley was engaged to Miss Aldyth Werge Hamber.
75 William Force Stead (1884–1967) was born in Washington, D.C., and attended the University of Virginia before coming to England. He was ordained a priest in the Church of England in 1917 and he became a member of Queen’s College, Oxford, in 1921. After taking his degree in 1925 he served as the Chaplain of Worcester College from 1917 to 1933. Besides publishing a great many poems, he knew many famous poets. He baptized his friend T. S. Eliot in 1927.
76 Mrs Stead’s sister, the former Mary Goldsworthy, was married to Dr John Hawkins Askins (1877–1923). The Askins were living just outside Oxford in the village of Iffley.
77 Father Cyril Charles Martindale SJ (1879–1963) was a member of Campion Hall and he lectured in the faculty of Literae Humaniores. He wrote as both a scholar and a popular apologist.
78 Mr William T. Kirkpatrick, who was born in 1848, died on 22 March 1921. He became the Headmaster of Lurgan College in Lurgan, Co. Armagh, shortly after its founding by Samuel Watts in 1874. It was during his twenty-five years as Headmaster that Albert Lewis became one of his pupils. In 1900 he moved with his wife, Louise, and their son, Louie, to Northenden, Cheshire, so that Louie could train as an electrical engineer in Manchester. A few years later he and Mrs Kirkpatrick moved to Great Bookham where he gave Warren and Jack, along with a few others, private tuition.
79 The Lewises had long known that Mr Kirkpatrick was an atheist. However, writing to Warren on 21 April, Mr Lewis told him how painful he found the arrangements for Mr Kirkpatrick’s body: ‘There was not to be a funeral—no service, no ceremony, no flowers, and he was to be cremated. My whole soul rose in revolt at the thought. The dear old man to be spirited away furtively—like an unclean thing—and burned!’
80 Leo Kingsley Baker (1898–1986) matriculated at Wadham College in 1917. He served as a Flight Lieutenant in the RAF and was awarded the distinguished Flying Cross in 1918. He returned to Oxford in 1919 and took his B.A. in 1922.
81 Dr and Mrs A. J. Carlyle lived with their family in 29 Holywell Street.
82 John Keats, The Fall of Hyperion, I, pp. 49–50. Slightly misquoted.
83 Sidney John Selby Groves (1897–1970) was ordained in 1922. He was Vicar of Sonning 1942–65 and a Canon of Christ Church.
84 John Henry Newman, Loss and Gain (1848).
85 The Encaenia is Oxford University’s annual Commemoration of founders and benefactors. This one took place on 22 June.
86 Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) was the Prime Minister and Minister for War of France, 1917–20. Vice-Admiral Sir Roger Keyes (1881–19
29) was Admiral of the Fleet 1920–29 and the hero of Zeebruger. The Canon of Notre-Dame de Paris was the Rt Rev. Monseigneur Pierre Batiffol (1861–1929), a distinguished Church historian.
87 David Garrick’s imaginary epitaph on Oliver Goldsmith.
88 Lord Big (a frog), Polonius Green (a parrot) and Sir Charles Arabudda (a fish) are characters from the world of ‘Boxen’ which Jack and Warren created as boys. They are still to be found in the stories Jack wrote about them and now published as Boxen: The Imaginary World of the Young C.S. Lewis, ed. Walter Hooper (London, New York, 1985).
89 William Patton Ker (1855–1923), Fellow of All Souls’ College, Oxford, Professor of Poetry, and Quain Professor of English Literature in London, was the author of many books on English, Scottish and Scandinavian literature.
90 ‘Optimism’ was never published, and no copies seem to have survived.
91 Although Maureen was fifteen, and a pupil at Headington School, Jack continued to refer to her when writing to Warren as ‘the child’. ‘The children’ meant Maureen and one or more of her friends.
92 Warren was able to compare Jack’s version of this famous motor tour with that supplied by his father. Mr Lewis’s account is found in two long letters to Warren, one written in August, and the other during the weeks Jack spent at ‘Little Lea’ over the last part of September and the early weeks of October. In the second of these undated letters Mr Lewis said of their visit to Lichfield: ‘Such a city! The ugliest and dowdiest place by far we came across .�.�. And the statues of Johnson and Boswell are in a mean street. But Bozzy’s statue is a magnificent piece of work. In every feature, in the cock of the hat and the pose of the body, in every line and curve it is the man as he must have been in life.’ (Lewis Papers, vol. VII, p. 87.)
93 Writing to Jack on 22 November, Warren said: ‘I have by the way read your essay twice, but as on neither occasion could I make the slightest glimmer of meaning out of it, I have put it away in despair for perusal in the cold tang of a saner climate .�.�.’ Warren was to remember years later lending ‘Optimism’ to a fellow officer in Sierra Leone who, after reading it, said ‘Tell me, Lewis, strictly between ourselves, does your brother drink?’
94 Mrs Moore is nearly always referred to as ‘D’ in Jack’s Diary.
95 Arthur Owen Barfield (1898–1997) came up to Oxford in 1919 after being elected to a Classical Scholarship at Wadham College. He met Jack in 1919 through their mutual friend Leo Baker and they became life-long friends There is an engaging description of him in ch. XIII of Surprised by Joy.
96 Alfred Cecil Harwood (1898–1975) had known Owen Barfield since 1909. He came up to Oxford in 1919 on a Classical scholarship to Christ Church and, like his friend Barfield, had met Jack through Leo Baker. At this time he and Owen Barfield were living in ‘Bee Cottage’ in the village of Beckley. There is a portrait of him in ch. XIII of Surprised by Joy.
97 Herbert William Blunt (1864–1940) was Tutor in Philosophy and Librarian at Christ Church from 1888 to 1928.
98 University College in Reading was later to become The University of Reading. William Macbride Childs (1869–1939) was the Principal of University College, Reading, 1903–26, and the first Vice-Chancellor of the University of Reading, 1926–29. William George de Burgh (1866–1943) was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading, 1907–34. Eric Robertson Dodds (1893–1979) was a fellow Ulsterman and he took his B.A. from University College, Oxford, shortly after Jack arrived there in 1917. Dodds was Lecturer in Classics at University College, Reading, 1919–24, Professor of Greek in the University of Birmingham, 1924–36, and the Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford, 1936–60.
99 Arthur Spenser Loat Farquharson (1871–1942), who had been elected a Fellow of Univ. in 1898, held the positions of Senior Tutor, Praelector in Logic, and Dean of Degrees.
100 Frank Percy Wilson (1889–1963) was at this time a Fellow of Exeter College and a university lecturer in English Literature. He was the Merton Professor of English Literature at Oxford from 1947 to 1957.
101 Henry Cecil Kennedy Wyld (1870–1945) was a Fellow of Merton College and the Merton Professor of English Literature 1920–47. One of the books used at this time for the study of English was Wyld’s A Short History of English (1921) which Jack found a very muddled piece of writing and of which he complained often.
102 Percy Simpson (1865–1962) had been a Lecturer in English Literature at Oxford since 1913. He was Librarian of the English School 1914–34 and a Fellow of Oriel College 1921–36.
103 Edith Elizabeth Wardale (1863–1943) had been educated at both Lady Margaret Hall and St Hugh’s College, Oxford, and she had been appointed a Fellow of St Hugh’s College in 1920. Jack went to her for tuition in Anglo-Saxon because there was no one in his college who taught that subject.
104 Charles Talbut Onions (1873–1965), lexicographer and grammarian, joined the staff of the Oxford English Dictionary in 1895. He was a lecturer in English at Oxford 1920–27 and Reader in English Philology 1927–49.
105 Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) was born in Philadelphia but spent most of his life in England, devoting himself to a study of the English language. He taught on the English Faculty at Oxford and his many books include three volumes of Trivia (1918, 1921, 1933).
106 Neville Henry Kendall Aylmer Coghill (1899–1980) matriculated at Exeter College in 1919. He was a Fellow of Exeter College 1925–57 and the Merton Professor of English Literature 1957–66. See his essay ‘The Approach to English’ in Light on C. S. Lewis, ed. Jocelyn Gibb (1965).
107 Thomas Otway, Venice Preserv’d (1682).
108 Herbert Francis Brett-Smith (1884–1951) took his B.A. from Corpus Christi College in 1907. In 1922 he became a lecturer in English Literature at Pembroke College and, in time, a lecturer at a number of the other colleges of Oxford.
109 Dermot Macgreggor Morrah (1896–1974) took his B.A. from New College in 1921 and he was a Fellow of All Souls College 1921–28. He was a leader writer for a number of newspapers, including The Times, and he published several books on the Royal Family.
110 James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, 6 April 1775 (slightly misquoted).
111 Harold Arthur Pritchard (1871–1937) who was lecturing on Philosophy was a Fellow of Hertford College 1895–98, a Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College 1898–1924, and White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy 1928–37.
112 The Autobiography of Margot Asquith (1920), vol. I, p. 118.
113 George Stuart Gordon (1881–1942) had been Fellow in English at Magdalen College from 1907 until he became a professor of English in Leeds. He returned to Oxford to become Merton Professor of English 1922–28 after which he was President of Magdalen College from 1928 until he died.
114 John Norman Bryson (1896–1976) was educated at the Queen’s University in Belfast and at Merton College, Oxford. He was a lecturer at Balliol, Merton and Oriel Colleges from 1923 to 1940, and then Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Balliol College 1940–63.
115 Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, I, i, 14.
116 Sir Thomas Herbert Warren (1853–1930) had taken Firsts in Mods and Greats at Balliol College. He became a Fellow of Magdalen in 1877 and was President 1885–1928.
117 Hamlet, V, ii, 60–61.
118 Edward Murray Wrong (1889–1928), a scholar of Balliol, took a First Class in Modern History in 1913 and was elected a Fellow of Magdalen in 1914. He was Vice-Principal of Manchester College of Technology 1916–19 after which he returned to Magdalen.
119 The favourite walk of Joseph Addison (1672–1719) who had been both a pupil and a fellow at Magdalen College.
120 This entry gives an early glimpse of the pupil of Jack’s who became the most famous. John Betjeman (1906–85) came up to Oxford from Marlborough. He matriculated at Magdalen in 1925 and he left in December 1928 without a degree. His well-deserved fame as a poet led to a Knighthood in 1969 and he was made Poet Laureate in 1972. Deric William Valentin (1907–) was at Magdalen 1925–
27. He was with Naval Intelligence 1942–44 and is living in Italy.